The University and the Parliament of Paris, who ten years before had condemned the veritable Maid, wished now to deceive the people. They brought the false Maid by force to Paris, exhibited her publicly in the principal court of the Palace of Justice, and made her stand up on the famous marble slab and there pronounce a biographical confession, in which she declared that she was not a Maid; that she had been married to a knight by whom she had had two sons; that in a moment of anger against one of her neighbours, instead of striking one of the women she quarrelled with she struck her mother who was holding her back; that she had also struck priests or clerks in defence of her own honour, and that to obtain absolution for her crime she had been to Rome, and in order to make the journey in safety had put on man’s clothes; finally, that she had served as a soldier in the army of the Pope, and while so serving had committed two homicides. The speech and the ceremony being finished, the Maid left Paris and returned to the war.
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CHAPTER XV.
THE JACOBIN CLUB.
The Jacobins—Chateaubriand’s Opinion of Them—Arthur Young’s Descriptions—The New Club.
BETWEEN the Church of St. Roch and the Place Vendôme is the Rue du Marché and the Marché, or market, itself; chiefly interesting at the present day as occupying the ground on which stood the ancient Monastery of the Jacobins, where from 1791 to 1794—from before the beginning until the very end of the Reign of Terror—the meetings of the famous Jacobin Club were held.
The name of Jacobin soon became familiar in England, and, as in France itself when the fury of the Revolution was quite at an end, was often applied as a term of reproach to all persons of Liberal ideas. The word, however, is now chiefly known among us from the Anti-Jacobin of Canning and Frere, and latterly from the excellent, but short-lived, weekly newspaper of the same name edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood.
Under the Restoration, everyone in France who was not an ardent {162} supporter of the ancient monarchy was called a Jacobin. But though towards the end of the Revolution Jacobinism became something hateful indeed, the principles which first brought the Jacobins together were such as neither lovers of liberty nor lovers of order could object to.
In 1789 a number of popular associations were rapidly organised; this being the natural result of the reactionary feeling against a system which had subjected books, newspapers, and even conversation in public places (such as cafés) to a rigid censorship supported by officials and by spies. A passion suddenly arose throughout France for public speaking, and in a thousand different assemblies orators were formed. The States-General had just met; and, not content with the formal sittings, the deputies loved to address in a direct manner the outside public. With this view, the deputies from Brittany established a club called the Breton Club, which was joined by other deputies, and which presently changed its title to “Society of the Friends of the Constitution.” This association included men of all shades of politics, who were afterwards to make war upon one another. Among the most famous may be mentioned Sieyès, Volney, Barnave, Pétion, Barrère, Lameth, Robespierre, the Duke of Orleans (Philippe Égalité), the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, Boissy d’Anglas, Talleyrand, La Fayette, and Mirabeau. The Society had its head-quarters at Versailles, in a building called Le Reposoir, which, later on, became a Protestant church.
After the days of October the Assembly followed the King to Paris; and the famous club was established, first in a large hall which served as library to the Dominican monks at the convent of the Rue Saint-Honoré, and afterwards, when this order had been dissolved, in the Convent Church. As the Dominicans were more generally spoken of as the Jacobins, the latter name was soon applied to the Friends of the Constitution, who willingly adopted it. The same thing, strangely enough, happened to the Cordeliers and the Feuillants; so that the principal Revolutionary parties got to be known throughout Europe by appellations formerly monastic.